Population of France.— Antiquities. 451 
what he was pleased to call the favour, Mr. Fisher, unsolicited 
and unexpected, sent the Editor a number of impressions suffi- 
cient for the Philosophical Magazine. Under such circum- 
stances, he thought he would not withhold them from the nume- 
rous friends who have for so many years (now almost a quarter 
of a century) patronized this publication. 
POPULATION OF FRANCE. 
In the year 1820, the population of the eighty-six departments 
of which the kingdom of France, according tc the treaties of 1814 
avd 1815, now consists, was $0,407,907 individuals. In the 
year 1819 there were 990,023 births, and 786,338 deaths ; 
making an excess of births amounting to 23,688. 
ANTIQUITIES OF NUBIA. 
M, Jomard, of the French Institute, has just received a letter 
from M. Caillaud, dated the 5th of May, from Assour, a village 
about a day’s journey from Chendy, in Nubia, in the kingdom of 
Sennaar, in which that traveller communicates his latest disco- 
veries. At a short distance to the south of the confluence of the 
Atbara *, the ancient Astaboras, aud four days’ journey from 
Barbas, he found the ruins of a great town, with a temple and 
40 pyramids still standing, and 40 others in ruins. The bases of 
the largest of these pyramids are about 62 feet, and their height 
77, and on one of the sides of each is a small temple ornamented 
inside and outside with hieroglyphic characters ; two of those 
temples are arched, and the arches are decorated with hierogly- 
phic emblems, and with key-stones and ribs like ours. This 
traveller has ascertained that those temples are of the same age 
as the Pyramids. All the materials are of freestone, like the rock 
on which they are built, Ismail Pasha, who commands the mi- 
litary expedition into Abyssinia, permitted M. Cailliaud to open 
one of these Pyramids ; some Greek letters were found in another 
of them. The site of the temple and the ruined town is about a 
league and a half from the Nile, and most of the pyramids are a 
league further, the same as at Memphis. Bruce must have passed 
two leagues only to the east, without suspecting their existence. 
An avenue of Sphinxes, in the shape of rams, 262 feet long, leads 
to the temple, and the wall which incloses it is 426 feet round, 
The island of Curgos, mentioned by Bruce, is to the south of 
Assour, and contains no monuments. M. Jomard is of opinion 
that the great ruins near Assour are those of Meroe; their lati- 
tude, about 16 degrees 50 minutes, agrees with that of Meroe, 
* The Antiquities of Mount Barkal, near a place called Merawe, are 
about 70 leagues below, and very far from the confluence of the Atbara, 
which formed the Isle of Meroe. 
3L2 as 
